Whatever your console-game-playing plans are today, take a break for an hour starting at 8:30 p.m.

That’s the designated time worldwide for Earth Hour, a 60-minute effort to power down all non-essential lights and electrical devices to raise awareness for conservation and climate change.

Earth Hour, observed the last Saturday each March, was started in Australia a couple years ago by the World Wide Fund for Nature, which succeeded in getting the city of Sydney to go dark for the cause. A year later, 400 other cities decided to do the same, and for added symbolism turned out the lights on their chief landmarks.

In the United States, the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Space Needle were among those U.S. landmarks that went dark. This year, more than 2,000 cities worldwide, including St. Louis, have signed up to observe the occasion.

Now, of course, the power draw for an hour’s worth of fun on your Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 is nothing compared to the same hour keeping the Sears Tower illuminated. The point is though, every little bit helps, and any amount of time that the big-box consoles are off actually helps more than you may think.